Rural
Telecommunications: Getting Connected Reported by Statewide correspondent, Brad
Penner.
Go to Alliance and you'll find an old-fashioned downtown,
complete with brick-paved streets. Traffic is nearly non-existent. Life moves
at a slower pace here. So does the Internet. [Mary Cordell] "It's getting there." Mary Cordell works for Gregory's Insurance. She dials
up the Internet through a phone line to find quotes on insurance rates. [Dan Contonis] "The Internet is used extensively
and it's being used more and more almost every day. " Dan Contonis says insurance companies used to send them
books full of information. Now it's on the web. But progress has its good and
bad sides. [Contonis] "Now it can be done on the Internet.
What's really frustrating for them is they'll get two-thirds through it and
get bumped off the Internet. Or the connection goes fritz, or you know, something
happens. " Here, and at most other businesses and homes in Alliance,
information travels to the Internet over standard phone lines at a speed known
as 56k. A couple of years ago, that was considered pretty good. Not anymore.
[Contonis] "I think it is very important that we
have the same communications capabilities as anyplace else in the United States.
" Dan Contonis doesn't want his town to fall behind places
like Lincoln or Omaha… or Hemingford. Just nine hundred people live in Alliance's
neighbor to the west, but their Internet service equals most large cities. [Randy Dannar] "When I first started here we had
a terminal like this and then another one right beside it, and then we had three
relays of equipment in here almost the full length of this room. That's how
much it's changed. It's gotten smaller and we can do more stuff with it. That's
the biggest part of it. " This nerve center serves the Hemingford Co-operative
Telephone Company's phone and Internet customers. Here Randy Dannar and Kory
Haas prepare to install a new D-S-L Internet connection that will give a rural
customer faster, more dependable service. They can do that because the company's
board of directors decided to replace their thirty-year-old system with a fiber
optic network. [Theron Jensen] "And in doing that we developed
a facility that we think will get us through the next twenty-five years of service.
We've basically over-built our whole facility and drove fiber out within three…
to within three miles of every customer's home." The fiber optic line connects the Hemingford office with
huts like these as far as forty miles from town. A copper cable connects the
huts with the customers. [Dannar] "Cross-connect is done and it works. Amazing.
" The last step is to connect the D-S-L line to the customer's
home. [Pat Vogel] "You know, its amazing that we can
even get something like this out here." Pat Vogel wanted the new service because it's faster.
And it allows her family to use the telephone and the Internet at the same time.
[Vogel] "It keeps us up to date with everybody
else." Friends convinced Pat she needed better Internet service.
That kind of word of mouth advertising keeps Kory busy installing lines. [Kory Haas] "Oh yeah, this will be… right around
eighty. About the eightieth line put in. Seventy-five to eighty so… yeah, that's
been real good… real good demand." The Vogels live a few miles outside of Hemingford, in
the middle of the Nebraska Panhandle. And they now have Internet service that's
as good as you'll find in most larger cities. [Haas] "It should be quite a bit faster. And that's
really about all there is to it. Everything else is exactly the same; you just
don't have to dial up anymore." [Jensen] "For some of the students and for some
of the people who enjoy the Internet for entertainment reasons its convenience.
It's a quick product they can get to their wed page fast. And that's… I think
that's great. I think we're… we're happy to serve those customers. The customers
that I think are really going to be really valuable down the road for us are
those that are using it for business." At the Hemingford Ledger they still do some of the pages
the old-fashioned way. But that will change soon. Publisher Brian Kuhn already
prepares the front page on a computer, and sends it by e-mail to the printer
in Scottsbluff. [Brian Kuhn] "… 56k, that would take at least twenty
to thirty minutes to send, if I'm not kicked off because of the instability
of that caller provider service." Now he has D-S-L Internet service. [Kuhn] "Just a standard e-mail with an attachment.
It's sending it right now… it'll be about a minute." He'll soon save more time when they assemble and send
out the entire paper electronically. Faster, more reliable Internet service
led to other opportunities too. [Kuhn] "Because of this I'm able to do color advertising
for a lot of other different newspapers too. It's increased my revenue, that
capability." Theron Jensen believes others will see opportunities.
Five years ago he and his family moved back to his hometown of Hemingford. He
thinks small town life can be attractive if it's combined with high-tech capability.
[Jensen] "I really believe that there's going to
be a rural resurgence in America and I hope Hemingford is the start of that.
Where we see a lot of professional people, or a lot of kids who go away and
get a college degree or… even stay and get a college degree because the technology
is here." If high-speed Internet service offers opportunity, there's
also a concern that without it rural Nebraska will fall behind. What are the consequences? [Jensen] "More difference between the haves and
the have-nots. And we're going to be the have-nots. We don't want to be there."
A Panhandle economic development group talked about the
issue at a meeting in Hemingford. [Ellen Lierk] "I guess I get that sense in my community
that people are worried. We're doing okay, but we need… we know we need to continue
to invest in these kind of tools or we will… we will see a decline in the numbers
of people living here and the economic well-being of the people who do stay."
Creighton University economics professor Ernie Goss agrees.
He says the lack of high-speed Internet service is a drag on rural communities.
[Ernie Goss] "Even if you hold everything else
equal, there is still a real wage advantage for the… to the employee who's using
or has access to high-speed Internet access on the job." Creighton recently hosted a conference on the issue of
Internet service and rural economic development. Goss points out that seventy-four
of Nebraska's ninety-three counties have fewer people than they did in the thirties.
Goss believes access to high-speed Internet service could help turn that around.
[Goss] "It's fatalistic just saying, well let's
give up. I mean, let's just go ahead and write off those seventy-four counties
and not try to provide economic opportunities for individuals who wish to grow
there." So why don't Nebraska's rural areas have high-speed Internet
service already? [Goss] "Really, right now the number one issue
is cost. I mean we… companies can provide t-1… very fast Internet access for
areas of the state. The problem is we're talking about fourteen hundred dollars
a month and for a small business, for individuals, for groups of individuals
that's… that is cost prohibitive at this point in time." Tim Kees knows all about that. Kees runs a computer business
in Alliance. He also owns the Mall of Alliance. [Tim Kees] "This is the mall, right here. I mean,
it lives right here so we're doing the same thing that Amazon dot com is doing,
you know. But this equipment here that had to be brought in, this is a piece
from Qwest and this is the actual t-1 feed here. This is a super-dooper phone
line." A super-dooper phone line is what it takes to get the
job done in Alliance. Tim says he invested about thirty-five hundred dollars
into the necessary equipment to handle the line, and he spends about three hundred
dollars a month for the line itself. But Tim would prefer the less expensive
broadband connections to the Internet, like the D-S-L service offered in Hemingford.
He says his customers want the same thing. [Kees] "Dealing with all the people that come in
here and on a regular basis they're asking for that. They're asking for quicker
connections, more bandwidth, and they want to do everything their brothers in
Lincoln can do." For that to happen, the company that provides local phone
service to Alliance would need to improve their facilities. [Kees] "So we'd like to see these telecommunication
companies make the investment in the infrastructure to get us up to speed. I
mean, we may not be cutting edge but we'd like to be at least up to speed. That
seems to be the opinion." [Lierk] "For small, rural businesses the idea of
going out and buying your own infrastructure so that you can get that is not
feasible. And yet the people who are serving… or bringing the service to us
do not seem to be doing it fast enough. " [Tim Sandos] "Good morning, my name is Tim Sandos
and I'm vice-president for Qwest here in Nebraska." Tim Sandos' company provides local phone service in Alliance
and Qwest is often the target of frustration among those who want faster, better
Internet service. [Sandos] "I don't think that anyone out there,
government or other people, are more anxious to provide high-speed services
in rural areas than the industry is. Frankly, we want to be able to fulfill
the requests of the marketplace." Sandos says in many parts of the state the cost of providing
that service outweighs demand. [Sandos] "Unfortunately what exists out there are
a handful of people who deeply wish to have these kinds of advanced services.
But at the end of the day, not enough of the entire community who are wanting
these services." [Lierk] "As economic development person, I'm all
for profit. But if profit alone is going to drive where this infrastructure
goes, I don't think that's good for the state of Nebraska because we have so
many places in the state where profit's not going to be an incentive enough
to get the infrastructure to us." [Sandos] "They're asking you to go ahead and make
that investment on good faith. I can't go to my stockholders with good faith.
I've got to be able to go back with a plan that's economically viable, that
shows that I'm going to get a return on their investment." In places like Alliance, people who want better Internet
service may need to help convince their neighbors. With increased demand, a
company like Qwest can justify investing in a community. That demand is expected
to come in time as more people learn about the advantages of better service.
[Sandos] "It's a problem when you've got a community
or you're rolling out a service, and they haven't embraced the new technology
because they simply don't know how to use it." There are other options for Internet service across rural
Nebraska. Wireless companies offer service in Alliance and a number of other
areas. And cable companies are beginning to extend their Internet connections
into smaller towns. Experts believe the ultimate solution will involve a mix
of technologies. [Sandos] "Well, there's a great deal of work being
done now in laboratories for high-speed services. And I think that those are
going to come relatively quickly. If I wait until the technology matures to
where I can offer it more efficiently, provide higher speed services, then I
can offer customers a much better value in price and give them a far more efficient
service." So for now, Alliance and other communities will wait
to catch up with their big city friends. And at a farmhouse near Hemingford, Seth Vogel will enjoy
his new connection to the world. He plans to use it for schoolwork… later.
Rural
Telecommunications: 
